Liverpool’s Hope Street is blessed with not one but two cathedrals. At one end sits the massive Anglican cathedral, consecrated in 1924. And at the other is the eye-catching Catholic Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Construction of the Metropolitan Cathedral actually started back in 1933, but Edwin Lutyens’s ultra-grandiose design eventually proved too costly and only the crypt was finished. Work on a less ambitious building, designed by Sir Frederick Gibberd, got underway in 1962. Nicknamed ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’, the building has the altar at its centre and the pews circled around it. Try and visit it on a sunny day, when the stained glass windows bathe the interior in an array of glorious colours.

Did you know?

Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008 saw the Metropolitan Cathedral host notable world premieres by two of Britain’s greatest composers. The first, in March, was of Sir John Tavener’s Requiem, in which the he Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir was conducted by Vasily Petrenko. The second, in December, was Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s A Hymn To The Spirit Of Fire, sung by the cathedral’s own choir alongside the Cantata Choir. Sir Peter dedicated his work to Sir Paul McCartney.

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